The latest facts and figures from the all of the most influential medical journals; newspapers; and health, fitness, and wellness websites.

22 -- The height, in inches, of Chandra Bahadur Dangi, a 72-year-old from western Nepal who claims to be the shortest living man in the world. Guinness World Records currently recognizes 23.5-inch-tall Junrey Balawing, 18, of the Philippines. Source: "Chandra Bahadur Dangi, 72, Say's He's the World's Shortest Man," CBS.

1,670,000,000 -- The amount, in dollars, of damaged awarded by a jury to Johnson & Johnson that was overturned. The U.S. Supreme Court won't hear the patent-infringement suit concerning a rheumatoid-arthritis therapy. Source: "A.M. Vitals: Chavez to Have Third Operation," the Wall Street Journal.

121 -- The number of disease outbreaks caused by dairy in the United States between 1993 and 2006, according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Those outbreaks led to more than 4,400 illnesses, 239 hospitalizations, and three deaths. Source: "CDC: Raw Milk to Blame for Most Dairy-Related Disease Outbreaks," CBS.

60 -- The percentage of those dairy-related outbreaks that were caused by raw milk products, which also includes cheese and yogurt. Source: "CDC: Raw Milk to Blame for Most Dairy-Related Disease Outbreaks," CBS.

63 -- The percent increase in chance that teenagers who watch movies with drinking scenes will binge drink themselves, according to a study published in the British Medical Journal Open. Source: "Teens Who Watch Movies With Booze Scenes Twice as Likely to Drink," CBS.

38,000,000 -- The number of adults in the United States who binge drink, according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Source: "Teens Who Watch Movies With Booze Scenes Twice as Likely to Drink," CBS.

9 -- The number of drinks that college-age Americans consume, on average, when binge drinking. Source: "Teens Who Watch Movies With Booze Scenes Twice as Likely to Drink," CBS.

54 -- The number of health risks that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including car crashes, sexually transmitted diseases, and liver disease, associates with binge drinking. Source: "Teens Who Watch Movies With Booze Scenes Twice as Likely to Drink," CBS.

53 -- The percent that risk of death by colon cancer decreases when screening colonoscopies are used to detect and remove growths, according to research published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Source: "A.M. Vitals: Study Suggests Colonoscopy Cuts Cancer Deaths," the Wall Street Journal.

65 -- The age at which Americans should be immunized against the whooping cough with the Tdap vaccine, if they haven't already done so, according to an advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Source: "A.M. Vitals: Study Suggests Colonoscopy Cuts Cancer Deaths," the Wall Street Journal.

586 -- The number of people infected, so far, with the H5N1 bird flu, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Source: "Study: Bird Flu Death Rate May Be Overblown," CNN.

346 -- The number of people killed, so far, by the H5N1 bird flu, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Source: "Study: Bird Flu Death Rate May Be Overblown," CNN.

15 -- The percentage of surgeons who responded to a survey published in the Archives of Surgery who had scores indicating an alcohol problem. According to the study, alcohol abuse rates among surgeons are higher than those of the rest of the population. Source: "One in Six Surgeons Has an Alcohol Problem, Study Finds," CBS.

19 -- The percentage of 11th and 12th graders surveyed by Liberty Mutual Insurance and Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) who admitted to driving while high. Source: "'Disturbing' Study Finds 19 Percent of Teens Drive After Using Marijuana," CBS.

13 -- The percentage of 11th and 12th graders surveyed by Liberty Mutual
Insurance and Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) who admitted
to driving after drinking. Source: "'Disturbing' Study Finds 19 Percent of
Teens Drive After Using Marijuana," CBS.

3 -- The number of years ago that the fake Avastin drug, which was just recently found in the United States, was seized in Syria. Source: "A.M. Vitals: Fake Avastin Turned Up in Syria in 2009," the Wall Street Journal.

84 -- The current number of programs in the United States designed to provide care to the elderly at home, at adult day-care centers, and at specialists' offices rather than in traditional nursing homes, according to the New York Times. That's up from 42 programs just five years ago. Source: "A.M. Vitals: Fake Avastin Turned Up in Syria in 2009," the Wall Street Journal.

20 -- The approximate percentage of piercings that become infected, according to Northwestern University dermatologists. Source: "The Lowdown on Body Piercing: Dermatologists Study, Offer Checklist," the Los Angeles Times.

13 -- The number of deaths, in 10 states, that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has linked to a chemical used to strip bathtubs. Source: "CDC Warns of Bathtub Refinishing Chemical Tied to 13 Deaths," CBS.

2 -- The percentage of us who are known as supertaskers by David Strayer, director of the applied cognition lab at the University of Utah. According to Strayer, these people show no ill effects from multitasking. Source: "This Is Your Brain on Multitasking," Psychology Today.

12 -- The average age in the United States at which women are getting their first period. That age is younger than it has ever been. Source: "Why Are Girls Getting Their Periods So Young?" Psychology Today.

70 -- The percentage of people who hold their cellphone to the ear on the same side of the body as their dominant hand, according to a recent survey of more than 700 people. Source: "Brain Calls the Shots on Which Hand Holds Cellphone," HealthDay News.

20 -- The number of hours that 27-year-old Sevket Cavdar was in the operating room while doctors performed the world's first quadruple limb transplant. Cavdar lost both legs and arms at 13. Source: "Docs Perform First Quadruple Limb Transplant," Newser.

12 -- The age of Alex Rodriguez, a Shelbyville, Tennessee, resident who recently stopped cancer treatment after five years of chemo, rehabilitation, and surgery. Source: "12-Year-Old Boy Stops Cancer Treatment," Newser.

About the Author

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Writing used to be a solitary profession. How did it become so interminably social?

Whether we’re behind the podium or awaiting our turn, numbing our bottoms on the chill of metal foldout chairs or trying to work some life into our terror-stricken tongues, we introverts feel the pain of the public performance. This is because there are requirements to being a writer. Other than being a writer, I mean. Firstly, there’s the need to become part of the writing “community”, which compels every writer who craves self respect and success to attend community events, help to organize them, buzz over them, and—despite blitzed nerves and staggering bowels—present and perform at them. We get through it. We bully ourselves into it. We dose ourselves with beta blockers. We drink. We become our own worst enemies for a night of validation and participation.

Even when a dentist kills an adored lion, and everyone is furious, there’s loftier righteousness to be had.

Now is the point in the story of Cecil the lion—amid non-stop news coverage and passionate social-media advocacy—when people get tired of hearing about Cecil the lion. Even if they hesitate to say it.

But Cecil fatigue is only going to get worse. On Friday morning, Zimbabwe’s environment minister, Oppah Muchinguri, called for the extradition of the man who killed him, the Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer. Muchinguri would like Palmer to be “held accountable for his illegal action”—paying a reported $50,000 to kill Cecil with an arrow after luring him away from protected land. And she’s far from alone in demanding accountability. This week, the Internet has served as a bastion of judgment and vigilante justice—just like usual, except that this was a perfect storm directed at a single person. It might be called an outrage singularity.

Most of the big names in futurism are men. What does that mean for the direction we’re all headed?

In the future, everyone’s going to have a robot assistant. That’s the story, at least. And as part of that long-running narrative, Facebook just launched its virtual assistant. They’re calling it Moneypenny—the secretary from the James Bond Films. Which means the symbol of our march forward, once again, ends up being a nod back. In this case, Moneypenny is a send-up to an age when Bond’s womanizing was a symbol of manliness and many women were, no matter what they wanted to be doing, secretaries.

Why can’t people imagine a future without falling into the sexist past? Why does the road ahead keep leading us back to a place that looks like the Tomorrowland of the 1950s? Well, when it comes to Moneypenny, here’s a relevant datapoint: More than two thirds of Facebook employees are men. That’s a ratio reflected among another key group: futurists.

Forget credit hours—in a quest to cut costs, universities are simply asking students to prove their mastery of a subject.

MANCHESTER, Mich.—Had Daniella Kippnick followed in the footsteps of the hundreds of millions of students who have earned university degrees in the past millennium, she might be slumping in a lecture hall somewhere while a professor droned. But Kippnick has no course lectures. She has no courses to attend at all. No classroom, no college quad, no grades. Her university has no deadlines or tenure-track professors.

Instead, Kippnick makes her way through different subject matters on the way to a bachelor’s in accounting. When she feels she’s mastered a certain subject, she takes a test at home, where a proctor watches her from afar by monitoring her computer and watching her over a video feed. If she proves she’s competent—by getting the equivalent of a B—she passes and moves on to the next subject.

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

And if thy brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the LORD thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing today.

— Deuteronomy 15: 12–15

Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some person or other, and some other man receives damage by his transgression: in which case he who hath received any damage, has, besides the right of punishment common to him with other men, a particular right to seek reparation.

Even when they’re adopted, the children of the wealthy grow up to be just as well-off as their parents.

Lately, it seems that every new study about social mobility further corrodes the story Americans tell themselves about meritocracy; each one provides more evidence that comfortable lives are reserved for the winners of what sociologists call the birth lottery. But, recently, there have been suggestions that the birth lottery’s outcomes can be manipulated even after the fluttering ping-pong balls of inequality have been drawn.

What appears to matter—a lot—is environment, and that’s something that can be controlled. For example, one study out of Harvard found that moving poor families into better neighborhoods greatly increased the chances that children would escape poverty when they grew up.

While it’s well documentedthat the children of the wealthy tend to grow up to be wealthy, researchers are still at work on how and why that happens. Perhaps they grow up to be rich because they genetically inherit certain skills and preferences, such as a tendency to tuck away money into savings. Or perhaps it’s mostly because wealthier parents invest more in their children’s education and help them get well-paid jobs. Is it more nature, or more nurture?

The Wall Street Journal’s eyebrow-raising story of how the presidential candidate and her husband accepted cash from UBS without any regard for the appearance of impropriety that it created.

The Swiss bank UBS is one of the biggest, most powerful financial institutions in the world. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton intervened to help it out with the IRS. And after that, the Swiss bank paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million for speaking gigs. TheWall Street Journal reported all that and more Thursday in an article that highlights huge conflicts of interest that the Clintons have created in the recent past.

The piece begins by detailing how Clinton helped the global bank.

“A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts,” the newspaper reports. “If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court. Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS.”

During the multi-country press tour for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, not even Jon Stewart has dared ask Tom Cruise about Scientology.

During the media blitz for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation over the past two weeks, Tom Cruise has seemingly been everywhere. In London, he participated in a live interview at the British Film Institute with the presenter Alex Zane, the movie’s director, Christopher McQuarrie, and a handful of his fellow cast members. In New York, he faced off with Jimmy Fallon in a lip-sync battle on The Tonight Show and attended the Monday night premiere in Times Square. And, on Tuesday afternoon, the actor recorded an appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, where he discussed his exercise regimen, the importance of a healthy diet, and how he still has all his own hair at 53.

Stewart, who during his career has won two Peabody Awards for public service and the Orwell Award for “distinguished contribution to honesty and clarity in public language,” represented the most challenging interviewer Cruise has faced on the tour, during a challenging year for the actor. In April, HBO broadcast Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear, a film based on the book of the same title by Lawrence Wright exploring the Church of Scientology, of which Cruise is a high-profile member. The movie alleges, among other things, that the actor personally profited from slave labor (church members who were paid 40 cents an hour to outfit the star’s airplane hangar and motorcycle), and that his former girlfriend, the actress Nazanin Boniadi, was punished by the Church by being forced to do menial work after telling a friend about her relationship troubles with Cruise. For Cruise “not to address the allegations of abuse,” Gibney said in January, “seems to me palpably irresponsible.” But in The Daily Show interview, as with all of Cruise’s other appearances, Scientology wasn’t mentioned.

Some say the so-called sharing economy has gotten away from its central premise—sharing.

This past March, in an up-and-coming neighborhood of Portland, Maine, a group of residents rented a warehouse and opened a tool-lending library. The idea was to give locals access to everyday but expensive garage, kitchen, and landscaping tools—such as chainsaws, lawnmowers, wheelbarrows, a giant cider press, and soap molds—to save unnecessary expense as well as clutter in closets and tool sheds.

The residents had been inspired by similar tool-lending libraries across the country—in Columbus, Ohio; in Seattle, Washington; in Portland, Oregon. The ethos made sense to the Mainers. “We all have day jobs working to make a more sustainable world,” says Hazel Onsrud, one of the Maine Tool Library’s founders, who works in renewable energy. “I do not want to buy all of that stuff.”

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.

What is the Islamic State?

Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.